


a pound of flesh

by moonmagicked



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Body Horror, Child Abuse, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Nebula Needs a Hug, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Pre-Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Warning for Thanos and Everything He Implies Basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-07-11 03:36:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15963872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonmagicked/pseuds/moonmagicked
Summary: The first time Nebula lost a body part she was still a very young child.





	a pound of flesh

**Author's Note:**

> As always, heed the tags. Poor Nebula goes through the ringer here (but it's nothing that isn't already implied by canon).

The first time Nebula lost a body part she was still a very young child.

She had lost a fight with Gamora. It wasn’t the first time they had fought, nor the first time she had lost. But this time Gamora, not quite teenaged yet but still older by several years and stronger by far than Nebula, grabbed her wrist in an iron grip. When Nebula tried to twist out of the grip, Gamora twisted in the opposite direction, and the bones in Nebula’s wrist snapped.

Nebula screamed, collapsing to her knees and jerking her broken wrist out of Gamora’s grasp. She clutched her limp hand to her chest, tears falling from her eyes. A moment later Gamora crouched beside her, her panicked voice whispering only loud enough for Nebula’s ears, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry.”

Nebula pried her eyes open, blinking away tears to stare into Gamora’s panicked face. Behind Gamora, Nebula could see the approaching figure of their father. Instinctively she flinched, hunching into herself and clutching her wrist closer still to her chest.

“Gamora,” Thanos’s voice boomed, and Gamora jerked to her feet. Her eyes were misty and worry lines still etched on her face, despite her obvious attempts to school her features at their father’s approach.

“Yes, father,” Gamora said, and if her face still betrayed her emotions her steady voice didn’t.

“You did very well, daughter,” Thanos said, and Nebula flinched again at the stab of betrayal that went through her. Gamora had _broken her wrist_ , and Thanos was praising her? She wasn’t surprised, not exactly, except in the naive way only a child can be, still somehow expecting the best on some primal level no matter how often she was let down. But she was hurt, and angry, and scared, and Thanos’s words pushed new tears from her eyes.

Gamora nodded, casting a sidelong glance at Nebula as her head was bowed. Nebula glared up at her, though she was sure she looked pitiful with her sweaty, teary face.

“You are well on your way to being a truly formidable warrior,” Thanos said to Gamora, and he gently laid one massive hand on her slight shoulder. Gamora did not flinch at all.

“Thank you, father,” Gamora said. The words were like another little prick of betrayal to Nebula. She sniffled loudly, and Thanos turned his gaze to her.

“Nebula,” he said, There was no pride in his expression as he looked at her. His voice was gentle still, but there was an undercurrent of disappointment there that was yet another stab in Nebula’s chest.

“Do not fret, little one,” he said to her in that soothing voice that Nebula hated. “We will fix it.”

He let go of Gamora’s shoulder then and reached for Nebula’s wrist. She twisted away, feeling like a weakling for cowering from her father but unable to stop herself.

Thanos pried her wrist from her chest with ease, barely reacting to her resistance, as if it were nothing to him at all. His hand dwarfed hers, her frail, misshapen limb nothing but a little blue spot in his. Her hand was already swelling, disfigured and foreign at the end of her arm.

“Come with me,” he said, closing his hand around her injured one and pulling her up. She let out a cry again and tried to jerk her wrist away, but his grip held fast and all that she succeeded in doing with sending another stab of pain down her arm.

“Hush now,” Thanos said in that awful soothing voice of his. With his other hand he reached down and wiped away the tears from her face. She scrunched her eyes closed and turned her face away, crying harder. “We will fix this, and you will not lose another fight in this way again.”

He started walking and she had no choice but to follow. He kept her broken wrist enclosed in his, sending shocks of pain down her arm with every step. It felt to her like a leash.

Desperately, Nebula turned to look back at Gamora. Her sister stood still, watching her leave with a conflicted expression. Nebula was angry at her, angry that Gamora had betrayed her and broken a bone for the first time, but she still desperately wanted Gamora to follow, wanted her to hold her uninjured hand and lead her to the medical station instead of Thanos.

Gamora must've wanted the same, because abruptly she dashed forward and grasped Nebula’s free hand in a brazen display of fraternity that only Gamora would dare display in front of Thanos. Nebula clutched Gamora’s hand back as tightly as she could.

Thanos looked down and seemed almost amused.

“No, Gamora,” he said, “Nebula must do this alone. She needs to learn to be strong like you.”

“I am strong,” Nebula said, though the words were undermined by her teary voice. Thanos did not deign her with a response. He kept his gaze on Gamora, who stubbornly refused to let go of Nebula’s hand.

“Let go,” Thanos said after it became clear Gamora was not doing so on her own. The amusement in his voice was gone, replaced with a tone of warning. A threat.

Another moment passed where Gamora did not let go. Thanos bodily pulled Nebula away, jerking on her broken wrist. Nebula cried out, and Gamora finally let go.

Nebula looked back with teary eyes and she half-walked and was half-dragged away.

Gamora stood there and watched Nebula leave, and when Nebula’s eyes met hers, Gamora mouthed _I’m sorry_.

Nebula looked away and forward towards her approaching future.

She didn’t know what Thanos meant by _fixing_ her wrist yet. She didn’t know what it meant as she laid down on the thin, gray-sheeted mattress that was housed in the medical station. She didn’t know when a needle was stuck into her arm, full of a clear liquid that sent instant waves of drowsiness through her. She didn’t know as she closed her eyes and succumbed to nothingness.

She only knew when she woke up to find a foreign, robotic hand at the end of her arm.

 

***

 

It was with one final, brutal blow to her head that Nebula fell to the ground and didn’t get up again. _It wasn’t fair,_  she thought bitterly as she hit the ground. Gamora had recently had a growth spurt, gotten taller and stronger as her body aged into that of a teenager’s. Nebula’s body was still that of a child’s, thin-limbed and lanky and soft-boned. It wasn’t _fair_.

She lay on the hard, dusty floor, her breath coming in painful, quick gasps as her vision swum before her. Black spots danced across her line of vision, flashing in time with the pounding of her blood in her ears. She thought she could taste blood in her mouth, but everything seemed to far away for her to focus and be sure.

Instead of clearing, her eyesight progressively darkened, blackness falling across everything like a looming shadow.

“Nebula,” Thanos’s voice boomed inches away from her, and it was only then that Nebula realized it actually _was_ a shadow—Thanos’s shadow.

“Nebula, rise,” Thanos said. His voice seemed to shake the very ground she lay on. She shuddered, hands scrambling for purchase below her, trying to get a firm grip to push herself up. But her arms weren’t listening to her, her limbs wouldn’t move as she wanted them to. Try as she might, she could not sit up. Everything continued to spin around her and nausea rose up her throat.

Beside her, she heard Thanos let out a deep sigh. Despite herself, she started trembling. It had been a long time since Gamora had beaten her this badly in a fight, and the thought of how Thanos might punish her for it wracked Nebula’s body with more shivers. She only hoped Thanos would mistake it for pain and not fear.

“It is alright,” Thanos said, and Nebula saw a dark shadow cover her entire line of vision just before she felt his hand on the side of her head. She flinched at the touch, though part of her also longed for the comfort, however thin it might be. “I suppose I cannot expect any more out of you than you are able to give. I had hoped with time you would prove to be Gamora’s equal, but perhaps I was mistaken.”

That sparked something hot and fierce in Nebula’s gut. The rage his words brought on helped clear her head and she gasped out, “No.”

“No?” Thanos’s voice was mild. Humoring her. She grit her teeth. She was not weak. She was Gamora’s equal, she _was_ , and she would prove it.

With every ounce of strength she could muster, Nebula pushed herself up. She made it onto her knees until the world spun and hot, acidic bile rushed up out of her throat and out of her nose, burning and choking her. It took several long moments for the nausea to pass, and when it did, it was all Nebula could do to take in deep, ragged breaths and stare at the puddle of bloody vomit on the ground below, inches from her shaking hands.

But she was sitting up, and that meant she was closer to looking Thanos in the eyes when she could finally lift her head up to meet his gaze.

He had said nothing as she had sat up, made no move to help or harm as she had puked. It was only when Nebula looked at him that he finally spoke.

“Do you think you can do better?” he asked. His voice was even, but Nebula heard mocking in it.

“Yes,” she said. Her voice sounded thin, weak.

“Then tell me your error, little one, so we can fix it. What did you do wrong?”

Nebula shuddered again, her body twitching spasmodically. _Fix it_. Few words could inspire such dread in her as those.

“I didn’t see her,” she said. She tried to keep her voice steady, and chose to ignore the tremble when she didn’t succeed. “She came up on my side and I didn’t see her strike.”

Thanos reached out again with one of his— _awful, grotesque, cruel—_ hands, again cupping the injured side of her face. Her treacherous body betrayed her with a flinch.

“Was it this side she came up on?”

She nodded, and his grip tightened.

“So it was this eye that failed you, daughter?”

Nebula took in a sharp breath, the beginnings of panic fluttering in her chest. “What?”

“This eye,” he tightened his grip around her head to punctuate the words, “did not see Gamora’s strike in time to stop it, is that right?”

Nebula’s ragged breaths were the only reply in the wake of his question.

“Hmm.” Nebula felt the vibrations of his voice all the way through her jaw into her skull. She was painfully aware of how he could crush her skull with one clench of his hand, how her life was literally in his hands at that moment. She almost wished he would do it, that he would finally just end her wretched excuse for a life.

“We will fix this then,” he said, dragging his thumb gently just below her left eye.

Without warning he pressed his thumb into the socket, pushing into the soft, vulnerable flesh of her eye, and Nebula screamed.

It was a pain like nothing she had ever felt before, hot and sharp and throbbing. It felt like his fingers dug all the way into her skull, like they were going deeper and deeper than was physically possible, and then she felt something _pull_ , felt something _tear_ from deep within and she could do nothing but scream and scream and scream.

“ _Stop, stop, no, nonononono, please, please stop,_ ” she screamed, though the words were barely coherent. She lashed out with her arms, hitting and pounding against him, but it was useless.

Then it was over, and there was nothing but an empty, throbbing, bloody hole in her skull.

“Hush, child,” Thanos said, and he ran what she was sure was meant to be a comforting hand along the side of her cheek, but Nebula shuddered. “We will fix this now.”

He held up his hand in front of her eyes—her _eye_ , only one now, oh god, oh god—and in it was a bloodied, black lump of flesh. Nebula was torn between wanting to scream again and wanting to vomit again.

“This eye won’t fail you a second time, daughter,” Thanos said, and he ran his bloody thumb gently over her cheek once more.

“Come now, and we will fix you.” His hand drifted from her cheek to her hand, and he lifted her up. She rose up on quivering legs for merely a second before she collapsed back to the ground with a pained cry.

“Shhh,” he said, picking her up in his arms like she was a little child. “Let us go.”

She didn’t have the energy to fight him. She lay limp, tears leaking from her one eye.

As Thanos carried her away she saw Gamora standing still in the distance, still holding the staff she had bashed Nebula’s head in with.

Part of Nebula wanted to scream at Gamora, to shout at her _this is your fault_ , to yell out _do something damn you don’t let him do this to me_.

The other part of her, the weak and childish part of her, wanted to cry out and ask Gamora to hold her hand and wrap her up in her arms and tell her that everything was going to be okay.

But Nebula said nothing, and Gamora did neither of those things. Instead Gamora stood still and held Nebula’s gaze until she was out of sight, and Nebula tried to hold onto that for the small comfort it was.

 

***

 

Nebula almost had the upper hand in the fight, until Gamora seized her arm and twisted. Nebula’s arm was metal up to the elbow, but her shoulder was still flesh and bone, and when Gamora twisted it the flesh tore and the bone snapped out of its socket.

Nebula grunted from the pain, but it was the only sound she let out. She yanked her arm out of Gamora’s grip, disregarding the throbbing ache of her shoulder. It wasn’t broken, only dislocated. It was nothing.

She reached up to snap it back into place, and those few seconds it took were enough for Gamora to lunge and pin her to the ground. Her body hit the ground with a painful thud, but nothing cracked until Gamora’s booted heel came down against her ribs.

Nebula gasped sharply, then shut her mouth tightly as Gamora brought her knife up to press up the at the top of her throat.

“I win,” Gamora said, staring down at Nebula. Blasted, beautiful Gamora who hardly looked like she had been involved in a fight at all except for the patches of dirt that covered her sweaty skin. Nebula bared her teeth at her, tempted to spit in her face if it weren’t for the knife flush against her chin.

“I almost got you,” Nebula said instead, speaking the words through her clenched teeth. She hated the sound of her voice now. It was the voice of a stranger, a machine, a _thing_.

“But you didn’t,” Gamora said.

Slow, heavy clapping sounded behind them. Gamora straightened up, drawing her knife away from Nebula’s throat and letting Nebula at least have the dignity of sitting up at their father’s approach.

“Well done, Gamora,” Thanos said, a faint smile on his awful face. Nebula hated the sight.

“Thank you, father,” Gamora said. Nebula hated those words just as much. The awful script they played out after every fight.

“You may go,” Thanos said. “You’ve done very well, as you always do.”

Nebula jerked her head up. That wasn’t part of the script. Gamora didn’t leave right away, she always stayed until Thanos took Nebula away.

Even Gamora seemed to notice, hesitating only a moment before saying, “Thank you.”

Gamora looked down at Nebula for a moment. _Please don’t leave,_ Nebula wanted to plead, _please don’t leave me alone with him_.

But she didn’t, and when Gamora turned to walk away she did not look back.

“Nebula,” Thanos said, and it came out like a sigh. Nebula stiffened.

“Yes, father,” she said, her own part in the script. She could almost pretend it was someone else saying it when the voice that came out was so foreign.

“I suppose we will have to fix your arm,” he said, and he sounded so _disappointed_ it set Nebula’s teeth on edge. “I will accept the blame for that. I should have replaced the entire thing from the start.”

“What?” Nebula clenched the hand of her uninjured arm against the floor, grounding herself from his words. “It’s not even broken, it’s just dislocated, it doesn’t need to be replaced.”

Thanos looked so disappointed, so patronizing, that she didn’t even anticipate it when he took her injured arm in one hand and snapped her upper arm in half.

It caught her so off-guard that she could not hold back her scream.

“Now it is broken,” he said.

 _I hate you_ , she thought, panting loudly in pain and staring in horror at her newly-broken arm. _I hate you and I will see you burn one day_.

“Perhaps it is my fault for taking you when you were too young. You had a strong spirit, yes, but you were too young for me to realize that your body was so weak. I made a mistake in taking you, Nebula.”

He placed a hand against her back as he spoke, as if comforting a child. The touch jarred her broken ribs and set her torso aflame in new pain.

“But we will fix you,” Thanos said. “I will make you strong, I promise.”

Raged burned hot in Nebula’s gut, hotter even than the pain of her broken bones. Rage stoked by hatred for Thanos, for Gamora, for herself.

“Yes, father,” she said in her foreign voice. She drew herself up to her feet, standing tall. She had finally hit her own growth spurt and become taller than Gamora, though it had done her little good in the end. She might be taller, but she was never stronger.

“Come,” Thanos said, and Nebula followed him. There was no point in resisting. She would submit to this, and she would come out stronger for it, strong enough to one day finally kill him.

Nebula glanced out of the corner of her eyes, searching for where Gamora might have stopped and stayed. But she wasn’t there. Her sister had walked away and left her with Thanos, without even the silent support of having a witness to her pain.

But one day she would be strong enough to kill Gamora too.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic started out as one thing and ended up something else entirely. Which just means you should expect more angsty Nebula fic shortly down the line! I love her so much and don't think there is nearly enough Nebula fic out there, so I'm doing my part to add to it. This one wound up primarily just being a little piece to drop a lot of my headcanons regarding Nebula and Gamora's childhood, but I have a lot more ideas for them, so if you're interested please keep your eyes peeled!
> 
> Writing and tagging this fic made me very aware of a trend in themes through all of my recent fics... 
> 
> I have no shortage of headcanons and feels regarding Nebula (and Gamora!), so if you want to chat about our favorite sad alien cyborg, you can hit me up on [tumblr](https://norsing-around.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Thank you for reading and please drop a comment and let me know what you think!


End file.
